Liam Stratford-Hunt – Almost Human (Album Review)

In today’s review on Music Review World, the relationship and the symbiosis of artificial intelligence with music get even deeper through this new release we’re going to present to you. The release is none other than ‘Almost Human’, the latest album from Liam Stratford-Hunt. This is a concept album that explores the themes of the advancement of AI in modern music and culture as well as the issues associated with it.

The lyrics in this release are all written by the human artist, but the music and the vocals are AI-generated. Each track has the intent to follow on from the previous track and tells a story throughout from the beginning til the end. Liam Stratford-Hunt also notes that following this release, he intends to produce a full album-length music video to accompany the music.

The album to me, isn’t that promising from the start of the album. There should be a way to expand one’s horizon and the state-space of music using AI-generated means, but this body of work simply comes off as generic- take the Prologue for example, with offensively predictable melodic lines as well as chords. The percussion simply doesn’t help the situation or take the genericness out of the equation. Surely, some noise would’ve helped, but the arrangement is not thought-provoking or as emotionally charged as the artist intended for it to be.

This Suno AI-esque collection of songs do not improve within the course of this album. The only way this would be appreciated is by people who simply just listen to popular music for the sake of it, which defeats the purpose of this album being sent for a ‘critical review’ if this is the case. There is just no character. I am not particularly anti-AI or anti-AI music; there are some examples of efforts out there on YouTube that do sound authentic enough that it makes it where I’m impressed by it. With tracks like ‘Welcome To The Future’ and ‘Shout Out To The Robots’, I simply can’t single this out as the echelon of AI-generated music. It’s boring, it’s vapid. The only saving grace of this is the somewhat unique songwriting by the artist, which presents a perspective-based story as it goes along. When it comes to the vocals, its even worse. This sounds like the soundtrack to a Blockbuster-shilled Disney production.

It’s kind of amusing how the timbre just continues and sounds virtually identical even with perturbations as the duration of the album goes on, but the same syncopation and style just stay. This album is not listenable if you’ve already curated a personality within what your music taste is. It will be if you’re open to anything and everything that YouTube Shorts throws back at you. Speaking of which, the songs on this album could work as audition songs on America’s Got Talent or the X Factor- shows that’ve also gotten the generic AI treatment on YouTube.

If you’re going to use AI to make music that you think you’re sincerely incapable of making, it’s best that you find out how to personalise and make your music less generic so that the critical eye does not feel like there is nothing to really make out of it. I am aware that the artist may take offense to this, but this is at the end of the day, not a press release.

SCORE / Good – ‘Almost Human’ is unfortunately so musically generic that I have to ironically give it a ‘Good’ rating. Besides the perspective-based songwriting through the lyricism, all aspects of this release are simply too generic- from the way the ‘sadder’ songs sound to the provocative ones. This is not critically good, just generically good.

If you enjoyed this, you can keep up with the artist on Instagram.